He Tells Stories
by missinsertname
Summary: The Face of Boe is a figure of legend, wisdom and awe, but he is simply in the business of telling stories. One evening, residing in Sato Hospital millions of years and light-years away, he recalls a story he once told to a young tree with a broken heart: the story of Ianto Jones.


**My first Doctor Who or Torchwood fanfiction! There will be more chapters, but this has been on my laptop for so long I have to show it to someone. I hope you enjoy it and review!**

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"He said he would tell some more stories this evening, once the second moon is out," whispered the blue-skinned nurse to her slightly paler colleague. They both smiled and turned their heads toward the tank in the corner and the great Face which was sleeping within it, expressions of mingled reverence and tenderness over their humanoid features as they observed him.

His room at the ancient but modernised Sato Hospital was a large one, paid for by the High Council without hesitation; no one was quite sure why and how, but everyone felt obliged to help and revere this being; some even said he had been there at the beginning of the very building. The Face of Boe was legend in flesh and glass, and even though every planet and every species they knew of seemed to know him, told stories of him, somehow he was always greeted with shock that he was palpable.

There was a kind of aura around him, something just out of sight, which seemed to fascinate. The legend said millions of years had passed since the beginning of him, so perhaps time itself? No one knew, and those who had dared to ask had received little more than what sounded like a short breathy laugh.

Sometimes though, he told stories. They were nothing if you were a journalist or politician or historian; they were everything to one with a heart. Tales of life, adventure and love. The love somehow still surprised those who listened to him; they nearly always cried, or their own species equivalent, when he sang of his losses, but so much more when he lamented on the could-have-been.

That wasn't often anymore. The last few hundred years had felt longer than perhaps even the endless days and nights of the first thousand, and he had learnt some things in that time: one of which being that everything has an end, even him.

Captain Jack Harkness, the man whose body had taunted death for longer than anything had lived, was finally holding up the white flag, the final few hundred years.

Nostalgia was really all he had left, washing over him day by day, all of his time flooding through his mind. So he told everyone he met, he told them stories. He empowered them, inspired them, and gave them faith in humanity and all of sentient kind.

"Come, I will speak with you."

The quiet authority of his voice had the two women rushing toward him. They sat on two armchairs that had been put there earlier upon the Face's instruction.

"Perhaps we should call some others? There may not be time for them to hear you tomorrow and..."

"Time is indeed precious, but tonight I will speak with you two. Every one hears me who wishes it."

The one who had spoken fancied that perhaps he was smiling as she saw his face move just slightly. He barely moved at all, his voice came from nowhere mostly, his lips occasionally opening. It was only ever really his eyes that showed he was more solid than just an ancient soul.

"Your eyes remind me of a young girl I once met. I told her a story too. Perhaps hers is a story now."

He went quiet for a moment, and the nurses waited with practised patience, leaning forward fractionally in anticipation.

"Once, about a thousand years ago now, I found myself aboard a tourist airship bound for the first hotel orbiting a star. A girl, perhaps of puberty age and a descendant of the trees, ran past my room long after everyone had retired. I heard her stop in the corridor; she was crying.

I called out to her through my open door, and I remember she didn't look scared of me when she came in, just sad, perhaps a little curious.

I asked her to sit before me and she did. I asked of her woe, and she asked of mine. We talked for a long time that night.

Her family were going to take the next shuttle to Axron 5, which was back then a newly populated planet, after we reached the star hotel, to settle in a new colony that was being built there, never to return to her homeland of the Forest of Cheem.

She would miss everything about her home, her friends and extended family, but was excited about the new world and proud of the work her father had found there. Everything would have been okay, she would have been excited, had it not been for one boy she had to leave behind.

All the tears shed across the universe, none is more common a cause than broken heart.

So I told her a story like I am telling you now. I told her of one of the many times my heart broke, and that it would happen to her again, but once, all it would take was once, it would be glorious.

Ianto Jones.

I was foolish and young, although I thought myself as wise as the world. I had already broken so many times; I had decided I could fix myself. I still felt for people, still fell for them, but I made a choice. I wouldn't be with someone, wouldn't be couple, not like that, not again. There was weight and darkness and inevitable doom in the word 'couple'. I thought refusing it would take that away, but it only served to make it worse. I couldn't say that anything had ended, there was no clean cut, just a gaping hole of nothing that somehow managed to be so much worse than the nothing before.

That is what Ianto taught me, that is what his legacy became. Never let anything be nothing if it matters. And he did. I have lived a billion lifetimes, more. I knew him for five years, and here I am, unrecognisable, and telling far off worlds of him.

I have cursed so many of my decisions, no they haven't all been wise or good despite all the legends I am told surround me, a light-year from it, but I always come back to the ones that others may deem insignificant.

For the first two years of my knowing him, I didn't look at Ianto Jones beyond his wit and suit.

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**I hope I got the Face of Boe's personality on point, that was what I was most worried about. I love writing this though, next chapter soon(ish. Hopefully.)! Please leave a little review, they make my day!**


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